The Secret To Being More In Control

Here is the complete transcript of the podcast

Happy Monday morning to you welcome or welcome back to success with Srini. Today on the podcast, we are talking about how to have more control and how to position ourselves to be in control of life. And yesterday, I was here talking about how to have more balance, how to create more balance in life. And it made sense to talk about control today. So that these two episodes are back to back. Yesterday, I made a case that there are three things that you have to do to create more balance. And I’m talking about control today. Because when you lose balance, there is pressure on control. Now you’re under pressure to control whatever balance you lost, and you will do whatever it takes to recreate that balance. So the way to preempt anything happening to balance, it makes sense to be in control. Some time ago, I made a point on one of the podcast episodes, that the only time you are in control, is when you realize that you are not in control. And even though it’s kind of it’s an oxymoron, like you’re not in control when you’re not in control. Well, that’s the human part. But then the truth is this, when was the last time you felt that you were in control of something, only to realize that you are not in control? In my 20s, and my 30s I was, yeah, I’ll control everything. But now with a receding hairline, almost bald. Head, I think I lived enough to realize that. After all, I’m not in control. And as we mature as we go along with life, you know, we realize that we’re not in control. And things happen for a reason. And whatever the reason is, who knows what it is. But, you know, some things are in a certain way. You know, it’s destiny, you can say, I don’t want to say that. I would rather say I have a firm belief that we design. But there are certain things that we cannot control. And that’s the truth. But there are certain things we can and certain things we cannot, we can control our thoughts, we can control our feelings, we can control our movements, we can control our activities, we can control our time, and all that despite interferences, despite of others, and encroaching or stepping in. And I talked about boundaries yesterday, we can control certain things, and there are things that we cannot control.

So let’s understand what are the things we can control, and how to bring more control. And I’m gonna give you a formula. See, if you bring in a little bit more discipline into anything you are doing. You are now in control of your life a little bit discipline, are you kind of wake up early in the morning, you have a routine that you work, you have an early morning, mid-morning, early afternoon, late afternoon, whatever your routines are just a little bit of discipline, you can you have more control life a little bit of activity, like maybe you meditate a bit more, maybe you do yoga mood board or whatever, whatever activity, a little bit of more activity brings in a little bit of more control on your mind. A little bit of more feelings. brings in or a bit of effort on existing feelings brings in more control on relationships. A little bit of full brings in better health or control on health. You see there are things that if done, create more control. And anybody can do it. And the lot as I say all the time here on this podcast, a lot of literature available a lot of content available on how these things have to be done precisely. But you get the point. That little bit of more brings in control. But for some reason, people choose not to do it. And sometimes I meet people who tell me I’ve done a lot in life, how can life is not rewarding me.

When somebody says like that, or somebody asks a question like that I’m doing I’ve done a lot. I’m doing a lot how can life is not rewarding me. Then at that moment. I know they lost control. See if I ask a question that this podcast is going to be there on YouTube. There’s a high possibility of listening to this on YouTube where you’re watching this. You’re not seeing me but at least you’re listening to this B-roll that’s playing and my voice is playing in the background. There is a high possibility at the time you are listening to this podcast on YouTube. There might be two or three views or maybe five years If I look at my views of my podcast, and I measured myself with the views, guess what will happen to me tomorrow? And you go back and look at all the other podcast episodes on YouTube, there might be four or five, maybe six views on each of the episodes. I know that because I’ve seen that. And if I take that as a measure, guess what happens to my mindset? I’m like if nobody’s watching this video on YouTube, why should I post on YouTube? If everybody’s listening to this on my podcast app, which by the way our people are, but not really watching this on YouTube, then my mind is what my mindset I’m compromising my state at that point in time. I’m like, Why should I even produce and render this, create a video, render the video, upload the video, target? All that write a heading, write a description, all that takes time and effort? Why should I do this? Well, in my mind is like, okay, if I’m doing all this, there’s no response, why should I do this? That’s me, effectively at that point in time losing control. So I’ve never allowed this thought to come in that I don’t want to feel I don’t want to find data points.

So that I have a proper excuse to walk away from doing what is necessary. What if that one listener, who happens to be you now watching this on YouTube? Still, does this make sense to you? And if I don’t do this, then maybe I really missed out on helping someone. I’m not saying I’m directly helping, but at least it contributed to your thinking in some way I did my little bit. I’m not saying that just because of me, you are getting anything. A massive result. That’s not the point. The point is at least is it sets you to discover more, maybe somebody else will help you. So I’ve met people who asked this question, and I’m like, wow, okay. So you understand that you’re losing control. And these thoughts, pull you away from what is necessary, what is your thing your game, that you have to play your role that you have to play, you are being taken away from it. And the more you ask these kinds of questions, the more you get dispensed from what is otherwise, the thing that you have to do.

So here is what we know, if you want to create better control, this is the secret part, if you are looking for the ultimate secret on how to have more control over life, it starts with you. By giving you give, if you want to have more control, if you are perceived as a giver, or you are recognized as a giver, or you are tagged in people’s minds, as a giver, your life is going to become better, for some odd reason. And I’ve seen this happen, people who give are the people who are the happiest, and things have seemed to happen to them. It’s amazing. So it starts with you being a giver, then you give, and then you share. There’s a difference between giving and sharing. Sharing is, whatever is a part that you think is yours, you give a small part of it to somebody who also deserves it or who also needs it. That’s what’s called sharing. But I’m giving you something where you give it away, you no more have it with you, you give it away. So giving great control, and sharing creates control. Now, let’s say you can’t give you cannot share, then comes something else which is caring, you care. That creates more control. It makes people around you trust you and believe you all back. So there is the magic that happens is a part of caring. And there’s one more thing which is much bigger than this, which is you live somebody’s life.

That’s even bigger. Okay, so you care for someone, you give something to someone, you share something with someone. And above all, let’s say none of that. But you choose to live somebody else’s life. That’s even the highest level. All this creates control. And this plays out in our life in different shapes and forms. I’ve seen parents who live the lives, literally, you know, the children that don’t do anything. They are working hard. I know somebody, there’s this lady who completely took charge of the life because her two sons and two daughters, they do nothing. But she has gone out to really create an economy for them literally working and making money for them, literally living the lives of each one of her kids so that the kids are grown up and all but so that they can have a comfortable life. I’ve seen that. I’ve seen people give away everything I’ve seen people share everything. I’ve also seen people who don’t are interested in tuition give or share, but then truly care for others.

Now, let’s pause for a second and go through this for now, which of these four things do you think is the most impactful? Which is the least impactful? Okay? When you give, you have some impact. When you share, you have a lot of impacts. When you care, you have the ultimate impact. Caring doesn’t involve anything, you’re just sharing your emotions, which means you are thinking about somebody in your thoughts. Magically, this one, this element caring part is ultimate, the least is when you live somebody’s life. So forget about some impact or a lot of impacts. Let’s talk about the least impact and ultimate impact. The ultimate impact happens when you care for someone. And least impact happens when you try to live somebody else’s life. So the mother who is working for four kids, they don’t value her work. Your friend, and your relative will value if you sit down and have an emotional conversation in which you tell them that you care for them. That has value, they will value you. But here, the four kids grown-up should be working should be bringing in money should be leading their life. They depend on the mother, they don’t care for the mother. These are interesting dynamics of life. And I happen to be in a position where I’ve worked with people, I get to see these things, I get to hear these things. And like, wow. And today’s podcast, in fact, is motivated by this specific event where I’m seeing this mother working so hard for four kids and said, Wow, how can this mother create more control of her life? Or how does she get control of her life? That’s how this whole podcast episode happened. That’s the secret.

The secret is that you give, share and care. Do any one of those, you will be golden. That’s all for now. Hopefully, today’s podcast episode is gonna motivate you and inspire you on some level at some level. If it does, then do me a favor, write a comment, and read the podcast, you’re watching this on YouTube, then there should be a place for you to write a comment and like and subscribe to the channel. That’s all for now. You go ahead and have a wonderful start for your Monday and I will catch up with you tomorrow. Hopefully with another event in my life. Something that I witnessed something that I experienced or maybe a question coming from you. We’ll see what tomorrow has in store. That’s all for now. You take care of yourself. Bye

How To Find MORE BALANCE In Your Life

Here is the complete transcript of the podcast

Welcome, or welcome back to Success with Srini. Happy Sunday morning to you. Today on the podcast, I want to take a few moments and talk about how to create more balance in your life. And I want to emphasize the word more here or underline the word more. Because there is a lot of literature on how to create balance. And chances are, you’re already creating balance, so many different ways to create balance. And there’s so much material. In fact, I have done several podcast episodes talking about how to create balance, there is one challenge with balance, balance is balance, there are chances you could lose. And we call it to balance because there are so many things you have to juggle.

So in order to not lose balance, you got to create more balance. It’s weird how this works, but, but you get the humor in this, hopefully. Hopefully, I’m conveying it. So we now know that there are three specific things that you have to do to create more balance in life. Because these are the three areas where there is a risk. So if any of these three areas are challenged, you will lose the existing balance of anything that you have got going. But if you kind of address these three, you can create more balance.

So let’s talk about these three, the first and the foremost, these are called the three “R”s. The first one is RESPONSE, your response to people alive, like alive. objects, like your response to humans, animals, and things like that. And your response to nonalive things. For example, your car, your house, the objects that you handle, all that. How do you respond to people? How do you respond to animals or things that have life in them? And how do you respond to nonliving objects? See, when you respond to people nicely, the chances are, they’ll be nice to you. You minimize the possibilities of anger, rejection, disappointment, frustration, and all that because it’s all of that in the communication, the way you respond to them, or the way you initiate anything that defines your success. So when you take out emotional drama, and you’re precise in your communication, then life becomes easy. So that is why this is a significant pillar, in creating balance in life. Then comes objects, the way you deal with things around. And I’ve seen people who tell me all the time, they forget things that drop things, they break things if you become a little bit cautious, and little bit aware, the way you handle things, your life will have balance, your life will become easy, leading to creating more balance.

Then the second “R” is RELATIONSHIPS. Well, relationships as a category is pretty big. And I don’t want to get into many things on today on the episode. But within relationships, there is one specific thing that is known to create more balance, which is defining boundaries. And you will let people know how they’re stepping into Insight coming inside that boundary or staying outside of the boundary. So when we talk about boundaries, there are a few things there are physical boundaries, emotional boundaries, intellectual boundaries, material boundaries, time boundaries, and there are more. Now, the reason why you have to define boundaries and operate is that you want to be safe, and you want to be respected. So when you are safe and you are respected, the chances are, you will also make other people in that relationship safe. And you will also give respect. If somebody violates the boundaries, that means now you are becoming unsafe. And the chances are, they’re not respecting you and you may not respect them either. So one example, I’m going to talk about two specific things here.

Let’s talk about time boundaries. If you have a schedule that you’re operating, and you have an agenda for the day that you need to accomplish, if somebody is stepping in into your time, and they are taking away your time, you got to be very careful. You need to convey saying I’m busy I need to go to another meeting and I need to deal with a few things so that you don’t feel bad at the end of the day that you could not accomplish. A few things that you planned for the day because somebody stepped in and you Now holding a grudge against them. The fault lies with you, if you don’t convey that message, you have a meeting, you say, Hey, I have 20 minutes, let’s talk, and I have another meeting coming up, I need to go. So you need to define that’s the boundary these days are more worried about my intellectual boundaries, declined kind of conversations I have with the kind of people, it matters a lot to me, the discussions matter a lot to me, there is a certain level of intellectual equilibrium that I’m trying to create every time I talk to people. And it’s important that others are also my friends, my relatives, my family, they’re also at the same level. So if I do not get that from them, then I withdraw. So I’m creating those boundaries. And in fact, I’ve been doing that for a long time. But you get the idea. So these are some boundaries that I want you to test.

Now, if necessary, say no, say no. It’s okay. And I’ve been raised in a culture growing up, I was trained, or I was raised, raised, the right word was raised to say yes to everything. And I was raised to surrender to everything. And as I started seeing the world, and as my conscious mind started expanding, I started to realize that the more I say, yes, the more I suffer. So now I say no. And I say no. with compassion, with respect, and with concern. When I say no, I’m not insulting anyone. And I’m not rude. I’m not angry. But I say no, with compassion, love, care, concern, all that. And if you want to learn how to say, No, I have spoken about a resource, an incredible book that changed my understanding. And the book is called The Power of Positive No by William Ury. Get this book read this book, I read this book about 15 years ago, or 12 years ago. In fact, 15 years ago, when it came out, I believe, 2000 5006 incredible books, since I started to understand the dynamics.

The third part, the third “R” in our discussion is the ROUTINE. What we now know is people who have routines, people have a morning routine, early morning routine, a morning routine, an afternoon routine, an evening routine, and a night routine. And primarily, there are two routines that I talk about a lot on this podcast, which are the early morning routine and the night routine. So you have routines that you follow, you have tasks, you have goals, you have activities that you do as per those routines, your life becomes predictable, and your life becomes more productive. And along the way, you create more balance. There is more to routines, and I’ve done multiple podcasts here, but you get the idea. So your response to the world, to living beings and nonliving beings, your relationships, and specifically within relationships, the boundaries that you set, physical, emotional, intellectual, material time, all that. And then the routines that you follow these three things if you are careful about these three things when they’re secured. And when that followed, and are implemented, they will create the balance or the more balance that you’re seeking. And the reason why you should strive to have more balance is that just having balance is not enough. Balance means imagining somebody walking with a bamboo steak, trying to balance on a piece of rope.

Now, anything can go wrong, you might have seen this in the circus. If anything goes wrong with the vein or with concentration with focus, the chances are that the individual will fall or will not have success with the routine, right with crossing over the rope but whatever. So balance is always a delicate thing. The balance will always be balanced itself and is always disposed towards imbalance. So we have to do a lot to keep everything in balance. And we have to juggle a lot.

Okay. That’s all for now on today’s podcast. Hopefully, this is helpful. Do me a favor. You like these ideas, these concepts if this is helpful. If you’re watching this on YouTube, you can write a comment you can like and subscribe to the video. If you’re listening to this on a podcasting app. Then there is a place there to write a review and read the podcast do all of that and have a wonderful Sunday and I will talk to you as early as tomorrow, start of the week. Okay, you take care. Bye now.

I’m Engaged But I Foresee Challenges In The Relationship. 

Here is the complete transcript of the podcast

Welcome, and welcome back to Success with Srini. Happy Saturday morning to you. Today on the podcast, I’m answering a question. I take the back, I’m re-answering a question that came into my radio show this past Tuesday. So I was doing the radio show, and Vanessa calls in with her question. So let’s play that question. And I want you to listen to the answer I gave on air. And then I promised Vanessa that I’m going to get back to her with a better answer, which I could not find. Actually, I thought I had a recording I had I did a podcast sometime a while ago, but I couldn’t find it. So here I am recording today’s podcast, trying to answer that question. So first, let’s go to the question. Let’s listen to the live call-in.

“Thanks for calling in your name where are calling from and how can I help you?”

“I’m Vanessa and I wanted to, I’m in a relationship. I got engaged and the guy is kind of like, from India, and I’m from here. So there’s a cultural difference. How do you merge the cultural gap?”

“Vanessa, thank you. Appreciate the question, congratulations. Well, listen, quickly. I’ll tell you this. And I can take this question offline also, and kind of give you an elaborate answer. I think I have a podcast or recorded on this already. I’ll see if I can find the link and send it to you. But awesome question. You’re asking the question because you’re seeing some challenges in the dynamic or you’re speculating that something could go wrong?”

“No, I’m seeing challenges, like my values of like working out and get being fit is not the same as his.”

“Okay, and have you have you gone to any premarital counseling?”

“No.”

“Look, I would highly suggest you do.”

“He’s not here yet. He’s coming here.”

“Okay. I would suggest that you do that regardless if you know, that can be done. You know, there are specialists who do this. And you know that, are you aware of that?”

“Oh, no, I’m not.”

“Okay. So there is the before you know, when when we have intercultural marriages, that is, you know, we, we suggest that, that you, there are some agreements that have to happen. And the counseling helps the process, there has to be agreements around money around in-laws around so many different things with children and all that, and specifically recommended when you’re having an intercultural marriage, and specifically, people who are born and brought up in different dynamics. So I suggest you do that. But just you know, that when you marry someone, you’re also invisibly married to multiple other people who are invisible. So it’s important that you go through counseling. And I can, I will find the recording, if you text me, then I can find the recording and give you a little bit more insights into this.”

“Awesome, thank you so much.”

“Appreciate it. So thank you appreciate the call. Okay. 888-818-0404 is the number in the studio.”

Okay, welcome back. So this is a very difficult question to answer on a live radio show. Because there could be many angles, there could be more questions, and it could take away the small little time I have on the show, which is precisely 25 minutes. So let’s get into this when two people get married. There are three things that come into play. A marriage is about boundaries. Marriage is about expectations. And it’s also about rules. So there could be some more elements, but then those are the three most dominant things, your boundaries, you have expectations, you have rules. And what I was suggesting to Vanessa was that she go into premarital counseling. And in this specific situation, you have somebody who is coming in from a different country. So two individuals from two different countries.

We suggest, I suggest and many other experts do also suggest premarital counseling is important for interfaith marriages. But then in this specific case, you have two individuals raised in two different countries, even though they may have the same fate which I do not know. But then there is a value mismatch. You know the way if I’m raised in a different country, I inculcate different values, even though I may have the same education, the same faith, but different values. So, for somebody who comes into a new country, there has to be some learning that has to happen. So as a part of premarital counseling, good counseling involves discussing family, friends, money, and career was renting all of that. So who is going to move to which place? Who is going to have a full-time career and who doesn’t have a part-time career? How is the money, should you have separate bank accounts, or should you have a single bank account? Usually what we see and is I see is somebody you know, between two people who come together, one has bad financial acumen really bad like they have debt, they have all that. And then the other is very careful about money. And there lies the mismatch right there. And sometimes I see one really deep into the external family literally in a whole different dynamic, and the other is not. So when two people come together, they’re opposite. So it’s very rarely you see two people coming together who are completely in sync with everything is hard. And that’s why we call it a marriage, it’s hard. And marriage is something that you have to work on every day, it’s not like you are set to begin with. So there is work.

And sometimes even though you see that two people are in absolute sync, they still are, they’re still working on things that are invisible, that are very good in hiding the very good and masking, but there are the things that they’re working on behind the scenes that are invisible. So there is work that needs to happen. But then good counseling, premarital counseling addresses these things. Specifically, what it does is the end goal of premarital counseling is to have agreements in place around the boundaries, rules, and expectations. So an agreement is important, and that protects the boundaries, expectations, and rules. Now, I’ll also extend this a bit more. And I’ll say that try to get some, as you start looking into, you know, your partner’s values, you start to understand. And when I said that, you know, he’s not here yet. And that was a point you made.
So once he comes over, you’re going to start looking into things that you think are missing, or that need to be bridged or needs to be kind of addressed. Whatever they are, you also need to look into something called integration coaching, like somebody who can be quickly integrated into the happenings of this part of the world. or whichever part you both decide to eventually stay. So that thing has to be addressed also, which can be discussed in the premarital counseling also. Those are some of the things I wanted to talk about. And it just clearly sees takes about five minutes to talk about this. And if I would spend five minutes on my radio show, then there are other things that I could, I cannot cover. So this podcast allows me to speak my mind.

Okay, so that’s all for now, hopefully, this is helpful. If it is then you know somebody who is getting married or you know, someone who is in a long-distance relationship, then please do send them this recording, or please share some of your learnings from this podcast with them. Watch this on YouTube, there should be a place for you to like and comment. If you’re listening to this on the podcast app of your choice then this should be a place also for you to write a review, make a comment. And that’s all for now. This is short, this is sweet. And you stay tuned. I’ll be with you tomorrow. Bye now.